


Beyond all reason

by Welsper



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Episode: s06e05 The Door, F/M, Marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-07-23 16:10:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20011129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Welsper/pseuds/Welsper
Summary: In this life, and all that follow.





	Beyond all reason

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rosecake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosecake/gifts).



The air was punched out of Dany’s lungs as Jorah slowly folded his sleeve upwards and showed her his arms. Greyscale. She stepped forward, but he took a step back and shook his head. Her poor Jorah, still his only thought was for her and not his own comfort. How could she have ever sent him away? Perhaps then, this would not have happened. Dany swore she would make up for it. Whatever it took.

“Is there a cure?” She asked, her own voice almost foreign with her as she choked on her tears.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“How long does it take?”

“I don’t know that either. But I’ll end things before it comes to that,” Jorah said. No. No, she could not let that happen. She finally had him by her side again and now he would be taken from her again?

“Sorry. I am so sorry,” she whispered. Jorah stood tall before her.

“Don’t be.”

How could any man be so forgiving? Dany did not deserve it.

“All I’ve ever wanted was to serve you.”

“Only serve me?” She asked, quietly, feeling like a foolish girl. A selfish, foolish girl. Perhaps this would be the last time she could hear it. The last time she could say it.

“I love you,” he said, as if he read her mind. He was the one who needed comfort, but instead, it was given to her. “I’ve always loved you. Goodbye, Khaleesi.”

He turned around, ready to leave. Ready to die. Dany would not let him. She could not.

“Do not walk away from your Queen, Jorah the Andal!” She shouted and Jorah stopped in his tracks. Dany took a deep breath, commanded the tears from her eyes, stepped forward and reached out for Jorah’s arm. She grabbed it, startling both him and Daario. He tried to pull away from her, but she didn’t let him. Not this one, she thought. You won’t take this one.

“You have not been dismissed,” she said, a fire in her voice.

“You pledged yourself to me.” Her grip tightened. There was a fear in Jorah’s eyes now, a fear for her. To the seven hells and all beyond those with the Greyscale. She had walked through fire, she commanded the greatest khalasaar in history and she was the mother of dragons. It would not take her, and it would not take Jorah.

“And I pledge myself to you in return,” she said. His eyes widened and then closed as she leaned forward, and kissed him on the mouth.

“We will find a cure together,” she promised and pressed their foreheads together.

“If there is none, we will make one. This I swear to you, Jorah.”

“Khaleesi, do not doom yourself for this fool,” he whispered, but he knew it was too late as well as she did. Dany was very pleased he did not let her go. Their fates were bound now.

“If you want to die together that’s romantic and my congratulations, but Meereen is under siege and they need you now,” Daario said. There was a slight smile on his lips. Dany smiled back. Both of them knew it hadn’t truly been deep between of them. But she knew he would follow her, he and his Second Sons, to do what needed to be done. Behind the cocky facade and the loud mouth, there was a good man behind.

“And they shall have me,” Dany promised. She thought on it. “And not just Meereen. All the enslaved in Essos and those beyond. I will free them, and I will have you at my side. I will command the greatest khalassar the world has ever seen and liberate all the people that have need of it.”

Daario nodded at that.

“You’re a conqueror, Daenerys Stormborn. You weren’t made to sit in some chair in a palace.”

Dany shook her head.

“Not to conquer. I have been brash, at times,” she said and put a finger to her lips. Did she catch it? It was too late to regret now. “But my people need a queen as much as they need a conqueror. No empires are made to last through only tearing down. You must build, too. And protect what you have made.”

“Empires, khaleesi?”

“Wait here for me.”

She rode off, then. When she returned, it was on Drogo’s back. She addressed her khalassar, and made all of them her bloodriders for what was to come. No, she would not sail to Westeros and join the petty squabbling over an iron chair. A chair she had never even seen, not even in pictures. They said it was hers by birthright, and maybe it was, but what did birthright matter? What birthright did the folk of Essos have? The poor, the enslaved? Could Dany simply leave them behind, to suffer? What guarantee did she have that the great masters would accept her new order after she was gone? Already they laid siege to Meereen the moment she had left. No, she must do it right. She would free the people, the ones who called her mother. What mother abandoned her children? Her heart ached when she thought of Viserion and Rhaegal, imprisoned behind stone walls she had put there herself. It was time to make up for a great many mistakes.

She would the Daenerys of House Targaryen. And she would rebuild the Valyrian Empire.

–--

They offered her peace. If she agreed to their terms. As Meereen burned, they asked her for her hand. If she would choose one of them and rule with him by her side, they would withdraw. And perhaps even keep to their promise of abolishing slaver. Dany saw red at that offer. She had tried that course and had shipwrecked. Never again.

“You come before the Queen of Meereen as _beggars_ , not equals,” Dany hissed at them and climbed onto Drogon. From high on his back, she looked down.

“And there are not even table scraps I would offer the likes of you. Certainly not my hand. It already belongs to a man none of you could ever hope to come close to.”

She heard a crash, far down below. Her other two children rose to the heights of the sky and flew towards them. Dany’s heart ached at the sight of them. How she had missed them. Rhaegal kept circling the skies, but Viserion flew closer. Closer. Until he landed behind the ambassadors of the reinstated slaver cities and roared at them. Two of them sank to their knees in fear.

Dany smiled. She knew what Viserion had come for.

“Jorah Mormont!” She shouted, a grin on her face. She saw him smiling back.

“Will you be with me, now and forever? Will you be mine, as I am yours?”

Jorah nodded and Dany could feel her heart burst. With him by her side, she could do anything.

“In this life, and all that follow,” he promised. Drogon and Viserion roared. Together, Dany and Jorah rose to the skies. The ships that didn’t surrender burned.

She was queen of Meereen again. And by her side was a king.

–--

“This is the Lady Kinvara, High Priestess of the Lord of Light.”

Lord Varys sounded deeply troubled as he introduced her to the beautiful woman in red. Dany had seen those women and men before, preaching of her, _for_ her. She had a certain fondness for them, if only for the comfort they seemed to give the downtrodden.

“Your Grace,” Kinvara said. She reached out for them, and Jorah stilled the hand on his sword hilt with a movement of Dany’s hand. There was naught to fear from this woman, Dany knew. She never feared fire.

“There are many things still left for you to do. For both of you,” she said and laid her warm hands on Dany’s lips and Jorah’s arm.

“You carry with you the blessings of the Lord of Light. And with those, the hope of all the poor and slaves in this world. Do you truly mean it then, if you say you wish to free them?”

Dany nodded, with no means of giving an answer as Kinvara traced her fingers over her lips. She gasped out when she felt a sudden heat jolt through her, from her lips to the rest of her body. She saw Jorah twitch next to her all the same. Smoke was rising from Jorah’s arm and she could see the same in front of her face.

“Then let me make sure you live to fulfil that promise.”

When Kinvara drew back, Dany’s eyes darted over to Jorah. He was rubbing his arm with wide eyes. The Greyscale was gone.

“He still has many plans for you. For both of you.”

\---

“So how do they marry, in the North?”

Jorah looked at her with surprise in his eyes. She was surprised to see him frown at the thought of it.

“They have a man of the girl’s house or one near enough give her away and the man claims her into his own house then. They ask for a blessing from the old gods for their marriage.” The knight nodded over to a palm tree planted near them, in the Queen’s quarters. He smiled slightly. “Always before a weirwood with a face carved in it, so the old gods may watch and grant their favour.”

Jorah had told her of the old gods before. They didn’t have any names, only still faces through which they watched the mortals toil. Dany had never seen a weirwood. Maybe now, she never would. She didn’t find the prospect as sad and unfulfilling as she thought she would. There were many gods in Essos too. Surely one of them would be willing to grant their blessing to this marriage of hers too. The Lord of Light certainly seemed alright with it. Two dragonriders in a marriage probably pleased a god of fire. And if the gods were not inclined, she would forge a blessing herself, with fire and blood.

“But I am not given away by someone else. I give myself to you, willingly.”

Jorah smiled at her warmly and it made Dany’s heart flutter. Jorah always looked at her like she was the most precious thing in the world. For him, she was not a way to gain power or influence or money. He had thrown that away, a chance at redemption and riches, when he had abandoned his duties to the crown in the lands far beyond the sea. Back then, the betrayal had hurt, so much it had threatened to tear Dany apart.

“That is the greatest gift a man could ask for,” Jorah said and kissed her hand. He always treated her so kindly, so gently. Like she was something precious that would fell apart if he gripped it too tight. Even though she knew he believed in her, her strength, that pleased Dany. She raised herself on her tiptoes to kiss him on the lips, enjoying the rough scratch of his beard against her own soft skin. Everyone here in Meereen was always perfumed and pampered and so clean, but she loved to see her bear always looking a little rough. She may never return to Westeros, but whenever he was near, she could felt a comforting coldness, and imagined the smell of pine trees and snow.

“Let us make it our own, Ser Jorah. You, the exile Andal, who spent more time here in Essos than in Westeros, and me, born over there but never having set a foot on its shores. This may be our home now, but we owe some of who we are to these lands.” Dany gently caressed Jorah’s cheek. He leaned into the touch and she loved him, she loved him utterly.

“If the Usurper had never killed my family, I might know the touch of a mother, I might not have wandered as far as I did and lived through these pains.”

Jorah closed her into her arms and she sighed happily. If all that remained to her of Westeros was this man, she was glad for it.

“But then I might be married to Viserys now, embroidering some cloak for him and waiting for him to return from squabbles, suppressing this or that insurgence and relieving smallfolk of their daily bread.”

She felt Jorah hold her a little tighter and the streak of possessiveness sent a warm feeling to her belly.

“And I might have never met you.”

The roars of her children above her head made her look up. She squinted against the sun, the sun that made her children’s scales gleam in the light. This was how it was supposed to be. Dragons were meant to fly free. And if she gave them purpose, they would not stray. They would not hurt, would be the swords Dany wielded to free this world’s oppressed and yearning.

“My children might still be frozen in stone.”

Dany settled her head on Jorah’s shoulder.

“For all the pain it has caused, I am glad things happened as they did.”

They kept talking through the night. Jorah told of her of all Westerosi wedding traditions he could think of. Dany laughed at the prospect of a bedding and was quite amused at the thought of Jorah getting carried around, being stripped of his trusty armour.

None of those traditions truly, completely spoke to her, though. Jorah never much liked to wear his house’s sigils, making no attempts to overrule his father’s judgement. And it was much too hot here to clad each other in cloaks. She thought of Dothraki weddings, too and discarded the thought. If she must, she would shed blood, but she had no thirst for it. And it reminded her too much of how she had been sold like some broodmare. She was tired of marrying for the need and spectacle of others. This time, she would marry for love only.

\---

They had made their own ceremony in the end. Dany had insisted on a night wedding, because she knew it would mean something to Jorah to have some of his own traditions there too.

Her beautiful white gown shimmered in the light of torches lit with the fire of her children, who were watching her from the side. Even Drogon had come. He stayed close now, ready to be called whenever Dany had need of him. It was a wonderful bond and Dany was glad she could share this feeling with someone else. Her future husband, who walked by her side. There were no parents to give either of them away, but that was just as well. Weddings were so often without love, without passion, decided above the heads of those that should be asked first. Dany had known too many of those.

In front of all of Meereen and all the gods who were willing to watch and bless them, Dany married her love Jorah and she would reign fire upon all who might try and tear them apart.

They were in each other’s arms, dancing slowly after the wedding ceremony was over and they were finally one before all the world. Dany had nestled her head against Jorah’s chest and listened to his heartbeat through the thin shirt. He looked so different in his wedding robes. Neither of them were really made for these fine gowns now, and soon, they would be rough and dirty again, fighting for the good of the world from the back of their dragons.

“I have waited long enough,” Dany whispered after a while of just being held by Jorah. She heard him swallow and the sound got a rise out of her. A comfortable heat spread inside her.

“Love me, Jorah.”

Cheers went through the crowd as Jorah lifted her up into her arms. He climbed Viserion with her still clinging to him and they rose into the skies. Drogon followed and perched with his brother outside of her quarters inside the highest pyramid.

She had been through this many times now, but Dany found herself nervous like a little girl as Jorah carried her towards her bed. Their bed. She could still feel his heartbeat and her poor Jorah didn’t seem to fare any better.

Her silver hair spilled over the pillows as Jorah set her down with the utmost gentleness. He looked at her for a moment, with such love and reverence that Dany felt she could cry. Maybe the entire world damned them, damned their love. Maybe this wasn’t the intelligent decision a wise and cunning ruler would have made. Tyrion had certainly not seemed happy with it. But she was. She was so happy she felt her chest would burst.

Jorah unwrapped her like she was a precious gift and her moans and cries rose higher and higher as he kissed every inch of her bare skin. Her shaking hands had some trouble unfastening the clasps and fastenings of Jorah’s clothes, but the man held still for her.

They fell together again and Dany wrapped her legs around his waist as he entered her. For this night only, her world was Jorah and the fire he stoked within her. Her arched back crumpled the damp sheets behind her as she was taken and took Jorah in return, forever bonding them together.

Nothing would ever come between them again.

They would make the world a better place, together.


End file.
